1. Technical Field
Example embodiments relate generally to a Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling (DVFS) method, and more particularly to a DVFS method for a processor by controlling operation frequency and operation voltage according to a computing task and a graphic task.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the density of at semiconductor device (“chip”) increases, more modules are integrated into the chip. Consequently, the operation frequency of the semiconductor device also increases. Various research has been performed to reduce the power consumption of semiconductor devices. One representative method to reduce the power consumption of the semiconductor device is a DVFS method.
Because a Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) mainly executes graphic tasks using a graphic library (e.g. OpenGL®) in the past, conventional methods of DVFS may determine the threshold values according to an amount of a graphic task, and control the operation voltage and operation frequency of the graphic processor based on a comparison of the utilization of the graphic processor with the threshold values.
Recently, the graphic processor may additionally perform a computing task in addition to the graphic task because of the improved performance of the graphic processor. A DVFS method considering both the computing task and the graphic task is necessary.